Archive for the ‘Literature’ Category

It’s that time of year when nameless horrors prowl the ancient cobblestone streets in the city of my forefathers…I mean, when I re-read some H. P. Lovecraft to escape the saccharine horrors of holiday shopping malls. “The Festival” is one of my favourite Lovecraft stories; it captures the picturesque loneliness of a bleak winter night in a dilapidated town before it plunges into the usual putrescent monstrosities. The opening paragraph is beautiful; the way the story then transitions into your typical Lovecraftian tale seems almost like self-parody:

I was far from home, and the spell of the eastern sea was upon me. In the twilight I heard it pounding on the rocks, and I knew it lay just over the hill where the twisting willows writhed against the clearing sky and the first stars of evening. And because my fathers had called me to the old town beyond, I pushed on through the shallow, new-fallen snow along the road that soared lonely up to where Aldebaran twinkled among the trees; on toward the very ancient town I had never seen but often dreamed of.
It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had commanded their sons to keep festival once every century, that the memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten.

Read the rest, and be glad that whatever holiday family gatherings you’ll enjoy/endure this season won’t be nearly so horrifying. Season’s greetings, earthlings!

Wood Thrush nest, by Genevieve Jones. From “Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio” by the Nelson E. Jones family. Source: Smithsonian Libraries Online.

Genevieve (Gennie) Jones was a talented young woman whose family, like many in nineteenth century America, fostered a passion for natural history. From an early age, she helped collected bird nests, eggs, and other natural wonders for the family’s curiosity cabinet. But Gennie noted the lack of an authoritative guide to identifying nests and eggs without seeing the adult birds. Inspired by Audubon’s famous book The Birds of America, published forty years before, she decided to compile such a a guide.

She planned to illustrate the nests and eggs of all 130 species of birds then breeding in Ohio. She and her friend Eliza Schulze created the images from nests and eggs that her brother Howard collected; her father Nelson provided start-up funds and even build a special addition to their barn that got enough sunlight to work by. The plates were lithographs—the image was etched onto a smooth stone surface, then coated with ink and transfered to paper—and the women planned to hand-colour all 100 copies of their initial print run. Creating a single plate could take days. The book would published by subscription, with a set of three illustrations issued periodically. Ex-president Rutherford B. Hayes and then-undergraduate Teddy Roosevelt were among the subscribers.

But after only one month of work, with 15 plates completed, disaster struck: Gennie contracted typhoid fever and died at the age of 32.

Gennie’s family decided to memorialize their lost daughter by completing her book. Her mother Virginia, teaching herself about natural history and scientific illustration, took on the monumental task of drawing the other 120 or so species, hiring three local women to help colour the prints. Howard continued to collect nests and wrote much of the book’s text. It took them seven yearst to complete Gennie’s project, entitled Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio. This book is now extremely rare, but librarian Joy M. Kiser has brought it to light with the publication of America’s Other Audubon. It reprints all of the colour plates with excerpts from the original text, and is among the most beautiful natural history books I’ve ever seen.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’ve recently worked as a nest-searching technician for several avian research projects, so bird nests have a special place in my heart. Each life-sized image is painstakingly detailed and accurate but also manages, through some combination of the birds’ skill and the artists’, to be aesthetically wonderful. The text describes both the particulars of the location and structure of the depicted nest and the range of variation within the species. It also features some classic wry, Victorian anthropomorphization. Take, for instance, these words from the description of the Great Crested Flycatcher (Myiarchus crinitus):

The Great Crested Flycatchers are very quarrelsome and tyrannical among themselves, or at least they appear to be, as they are continually scolding and complaining to each other and engaging in fights. This, however, may all be in fun, and their notes, which are so harsh and grating to the human ear, that when once heard are never forgotten, may convey to each other very pleasant and peaceful ideas.

The story of the Jones family’s labour of love is inspiring, but no less so is the author’s quest to bring this story to light. The book’s self-effacing preface describes this quest, from the intrepid librarian’s first encounter with The Nests and Eggs to the present publication. While nest-hunting may not be as common a pastime as birding (indeed, collecting or otherwise disturbing nests is illegal in both the U. S. and Canada), nest and egg identification can be a useful tool for birders and an essential skill of students of natural history.

Smithsonian Libraries’ online exhibit about The Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Ohio, including high-resolution scans of many of the plates and more of the text of the original book (America’s Other Audubon has only short excerpts)

Garth, an interstellar trader, is the first long-term human contact with the literal-minded and unfailingly honest inhabitants of Wesker’s World. But as his term there is about to end, a Christian missionary arrives. Garth, an atheist, panics and lashes out at Father Mark. It’s not just because he thinks the preacher will corrupt the innocence of the Weskers, who have no deities or spirituality of any sort. He also dreads having to explain a species with no concept of lying or untruth that he and the missionary believe contradictory things. But soon Garth, not having seen another human for a year, begins to regret his inital hostility towards the priest. They uneasily coexist as Garth prepares to leave and Mark builds a church with the help of the Weskers, to whom he also preaches. But the Weskers inevitably must ask Garth the questions he dreads, and he answers them honestly: there is no god. Faced with this contradiction, the Weskers conclude that the only way to find out the truth is to ask for a miracle, and only the grandest of miracles will do. What’s a lonely atheist to do when his sometime rival and only human companion is threatened with death?

This story is bleak from both theist and atheist perspectives. The Weskers seem so rational when they demand an experiment to test god, and if you come to this story sympathetic to Garth’s point of view, you’ll almost be cheering for them (at least, until you read their methods). But after the fact, after they’ve failed to reject the null hypothesis, that rationality disappears. They accept Mark’s preaching regardless. Like most religious people, they explain away contradictory data to fit the hypothesis they want to believe.

It has been a while since I tried to think like a theist (specifically, like I used to when I was a theist), but I think the end is even more disturbing from this point of view. It forces you to confront the fact that introducing the Weskers to religion, i.e. “saving” them, also ipso facto damns them. Garth was concerned that Wesker society would be contaminated; the Weskers now have to deal with believing themselves sinners; but Father Mark—at least, until he passes out from pain—has to realize that he has acted as Satan at the same time that he brought salvation. This version is set in space, but it’s happened many times in our own past. I’ve heard Christians explain this conundrum away or, more often, see it only as a positive thing, more than once.

A slightly irrelevant confession: I expected not to enjoy this story. Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat books are full of rampant casual misogyny coupled with so many comma splices I stopped reading halfway through the second volume. (Don’t ask me which transgression bothers me more. I can forgive one of them at a time, but not both. That said, the first book at least is pretty funny.) So I was reluctant to try reading this story, but I’m glad I did; it redeemed Harrison a lot in my mind. I can now blame those comma splices in the book on a terrible editor (or perhaps I should be less generous and assume that a decent editor fixed The Streets of Ashkelon up).

The interstellar Catholic Church of the future has seen a few changes, including the ordination of extraterrestrial clergy (though still, presumably, not of women), and clearly expanding the frontiers of space travel has brought fresh theological challenges as well as brand new heresies. Damien, a senior Inquisitor of the Order Militant of the Knights of Jesus Christ, is one of those responsible for stamping these heresies out. His latest assignment involves an Order of Saint Judas Iscariot and a book called The Way of Cross and Dragon, in which, among other things, Judas is not only Jesus’s best friend but also a Dragon-Tamer. Seriously, read the story just for this part; it sounds like a pretty badass blasphemy.

Damien confronts Lukyan, the founder of this sect, who freely admits that he made the whole thing up. Lukyan calls himself a Liar (capital L), and claims to belong to a super-secret group who believe in no god and go around making up not only religions but all sorts of systems of thought, as long as they’re beautiful and comforting. Lukyan tells Damien that he is doing just the same thing with his Catholicism. He takes him to meet Jon Azure Cross, a telepath and fellow-Liar, who senses Damien’s doubt about his own faith and tries to recruit him. But Damien realizes that his commitment to truth outweighs any desire to comfort people, and declines.

It takes a certain strange sort of imagination to put a plant at the centre of a horror story—the sort of imagination that not only sees the twigs brushing a window as tapping fingers, but that also assumes that the tree itself has hands. In the spirit of my recent review of The Day of the Triffids, here is a brief, undoubtedly incomplete list of horror/weird fiction featuring botanical antagonists. Anyone with additions, please chime in in the comments. (All links are to free full texts when they’re available.)

The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham

As discussed in my previous post, this is an eerie dystopian book in which most of the population goes blind and is then preyed upon by mobile stinging plants. Subtle, unsettling, and deep.

“It’s the willows themselves humming, because here the willows have been made symbols of the forces that are against us.”

Two friends go on a canoe trip down the Danube. When they stop to camp on a willow-covered island, strange things begin to happen. Things go missing, strange prints appear in the sand, and the canoe is mysteriously damaged. All the while the river is rising, and the tangled willows seem to have a mind of their own. In addition to being charged with suspense, this tale has some lovely descriptions of the riparian scenery.

“It really is extraordinary,” said a Woman who Understood, “that you can make that cypress seem an individual, when in reality all cypresses are so exactly alike.”

This Blackwood guy has a thing for evil trees. In this short story, an artist by the name of Sanderson has a knack for painting trees. And to him, each tree is indeed an individual, and they seem to know that he knows this. They seem to call to him, and he is drawn out into the forest around his house for longer and longer walks. It sounds incredibly cheesy, I know, but it’s phenomenally gripping, as the view shifts from that of the artists who really gets trees to that of his wife, who fears but can’t quite believe that the trees are after her husband.

An old beekeeper tells the tale of an ancient, gnarled, sinister-looking olive tree, a tale of a competition between two skilled sculptors in ancient Greece. One of them sickens and dies, first instructing his friend and rival to bury olive branches by his head. As the surviving sculptor finishes his statue, an unusual tree grows above his studio. It’s far from HPL’s best work, but unusually understated; one that leaves you scratching your head.

Just your standard dimension-jumping cosmic horror tale. A man sits down under an odd-looking oak and glimpses an evil dimension. His learned friend hastily prevents humanity’s doom at the expense of his sanity. The usual, but not up to HPL’s best—I’ll blame Rimel.

The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien

LotR has some classic nasty vegetation. The Ents, of course, are only horrific to Saruman’s lot, but Fangorn forest has an evil reputation. But when I first read the saga as a young’un, I was really creeped out by the Old Forest outside the Shire, which Frodo et al. have to cross as they flee towards Bree. The menacing trees trip people deliberately and gradually channel the travellers towards the river Withywindle, where they are nearly devoured by a sly old willow.

The Harry Potter series – J. K. Rowling

Vines…vines are great subjects for creepy stories, the way they twine around things and climb up walls. My memory of this is dim, but in Philosopher’s Stone, a trapdoor in Hogwarts hides a Devil’s Snare vine that tightens as its victims struggle. And, of course, the Whomping Willow (again with the willows!), introduced in Chamber of Secrets, has it in for anyone within reach of its bludgeoning boughs.

Despite being about murderous plants, “Little Shop of Horrors” it most emphatically is not. Rather, it’s one of the creepiest post-apocalyptic novels I’ve ever read.

The book begins with Bill Masen in hospital, mildly pissed that he’s missed the spectacle of the century—a meteor shower—because his eyes are bandaged after a triffid sting. Triffids, we learn, are strange, three-legged, mobile plants with an often-fatal stinging tendril. The species appeared mysteriously one day and quickly became a garden favourite—tied to a stake and docked, of course—as well as a widely cultivated source of fuel. Masen worked on a triffid farm, and built up an immunity to their stings; that’s why this one has merely landed him in hospital for a week. Triffids are soon forgotten, though, as Bill realizes that everyone else in the hospital—in fact, everyone who saw the meteor shower—is blind. Removing his bandages and leaving the premises, he wanders about London, watching as it begins to devolve into your typical looting-filled post-apocalyptic chaos. He rescues a young lady named Josella, who was fortunately in bed with a wicked hangover during the meteor shower, and thus can also see. As they encounter other sighted people, it becomes apparent that something must be done, and opinions differ: one party feels obligated to assign sighted people to groups of blind people to guide them to food, water, and shelter; another feels that this will just prolong suffering, and plans to set up a breeding colony to restart civilization. As Bill and Josella struggle to survive, the triffids, which seem to be oddly aware of things, begin to encroach. And to a triffid, anyone who can’t see is a sitting duck.

My favourite thing about this book, and about Wyndham’s science fiction in general, is that it’s not concerned with detailing how things came to be as screwed up as they are. No one knows where triffids came from, or how everyone went blind. The point is that this is what happened, so let’s see how one might deal with that. (The topic is not wholly ignored, as it’s natural for the characters to speculate on things like that, but little is ever resolved.) The book is carefully crafted to showcase different possible ways that people might deal with a disaster: Bill and Josella run into people with various ideas about how to re-establish civilization, and even try some of them out, eventually coming to a conclusion about what sort of society they’ll need to aim at. (Hint: polygyny is encouraged!) So, rather than an abstract discussion about how best to structure society when most people are blind and there are roving stands of dangerous plants about, we get to see how various ideas begin to fall apart in practice. It’s less bleak than you’d expect. While there is plenty of need for sacrificing the few to save the many, it’s contrasted with the inevitable and kind of sweet romance between Josella and Bill. It’s a rather civilized, or at least civil, sort of apocalypse.

The triffids are woven into the plot gradually. After Masen’s initial narration of what they are, they vanish for a while. Then they kill Josella’s family, having apparently broken into their country house, prompting Bill and Josella to acquire anti-triffid gear (which consists of protective mask and gloves and a triffid gun; later, flamethrowers are added). Back in London, though, this precaution is laughed at—there are no triffids in sight. Eventually, though, the triffids start to encroach. As humanity dwindles in number, the triffids congregate around the last groups of survivors. In large enough numbers, they can break down fences. It’s this gradual appearance, from a garden plant that’s probably the least of everyone’s worries to a menace to the human species, combined with the mystery of their origin, that makes the whole book so creepy.

Wyndham has a knack for writing happy-ish endings, wherein things mostly get sorted out, but looming threats are still on the horizon. Without spoiling anything about this book’s ending, I’ll just say that you don’t just snap out of an apocalypse. (Ordinarily, that would be a perfect setup for sequels, but Wyndham refrains, which is classy…though later, someone else did write one, entitled Night of the Triffids.)

The Day of the Triffids is a thoughtful take on how people might respond to the virtual end of civilization, and the extra weirdness of walking predatory plants makes it stand out. I highly recommend it, as I would recommend anything else by Wyndham.

It just occurred to me that I should put the King James Bible through it. You’re welcome. (Since the algorithm apparently includes the verse numbers in syllable counts, I’ve removed a few that made no sense. Also, there are some sentence fragments because of line breaks in the original text.) (If you can identify the book, chapter, and verse for each of these, you win…karma or something.)